Back In Iraq: We Only Want To Save You

Back In Iraq: We Only Want To Save You

New York, New York: Welcome back to Iraq --
complete with our ever present WMD's -- Weapons of Mass
deception.

Suddenly, the country we never wanted to have
to think about again is back in the news and on our military
agenda. So, after a few denials that troops would not,
never, and no way be sent, sure'nuff, U.S, boots are back on
the ground, but to play a very different "mission.”

Of
course, it's not combat, assures Secretary of Defense Hagel
who was wearing his tennis clothes when he met with GIs.
That is, no doubt, why we are pounding that country with
bombs again.

To signal that we are not back in the days of
the war for Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon announced its latest
humanitarian effort with a tweet, that, in the media world
we are now part of, maybe the equivalent of a whimper not a
neocon bark.

Once again, we are the good guys charging in
to protect and defend, save and rescue. You saw the
alarmist stories.

This report was on RTE in Ireland:
"Islamic State militants have killed hundreds of Iraq's
minority Yazidis.They buried some alive and took women as
slaves, as US warplanes again bombed the insurgents.

Human
rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani accused the Sunni
Muslim insurgents of celebrating what he called a "a vicious
atrocity."But, then, predictably, there was this coda
that put the story in question: "No independent confirmation
was available of an event that could increase pressure on
Western powers to do more to help.”

It sounded like the
story a few weeks back that had ISIS vowing to impose female
genital mutilation on every woman they met. Happily, it was
later repudiated.

This is not to say that ISIS is not
brutal says Edmund Ghareeb of the Center for Global Peace at
American University.

"Where have people been? Certainly
some of the recent reporting of the carnage by IS is
sensationalized, but their brutality is all too real. But
critically, it's been happening for years in both Iraq and
in Syria, where is should have been confronted. In Syria,
ancient Christian churches were destroyed, nuns and bishops
were kidnapped and priests were killed. In Syria and Iraq,
many belonging to different religions, sects and
nationalities were killed or forced to flee at the hands of
extremists and criminals. This was widely ignored in large
part because many in the region and in the west were so
focused on attacking the Assad government.

"As for U.S.
intervention, the danger is that it may further hurt the
Iraqi people and fragment Iraq altogether in the name of
this humanitarian intervention.”

Now, we have US troops
flying into the mountain that we were told was packed to
overflowing with 40,000 desperate refugees facing
starvation.

What happened when their saviors finally
arrived?

Here's USA Today:"WASHINGTON — A
review by U.S. special operations troops of conditions on
Iraq's Mount Sinjar on Wednesday has determined that the
conditions of a religious minority seeking refuge there are
better than believed and may not require a U.S.-led
evacuation, the Pentagon said…"Based on this
assessment the interagency has determined that an evacuation
mission is far less likely. Additionally, we will continue
to provide humanitarian assistance as needed and will
protect U.S. personnel and facilities.”

Comments Jason
Ditz on anti-war.com: "The Pentagon is trying to manage the narrative by simply
saying the rescue mission "appears unnecessary," but the
fact that it was used to start a US war remains, and the
State Department is doubling down, trying to spin the lack
of a crisis as vindication of the war.”

Of course,
protecting Americans was the first reason cited for this
intervention.

So noted the political scientist Michael
Brenner, without first noting that the City of Erbil is a
major center for U.S. Oil companies and their
employees:"The first thing to say is that we should not
confuse purpose with justification. Thursday night, Obama
explicitly stated that protection of Americans in Irbil (and
implicitly Kurdistan) was the reason for acting against
advancing IS forces.

This is not entirely convincing;
evacuation could be a logical alternative. Obviously, there
are other aims, inter alia in the immediate, securing access
to the air and support facilities we have established at the
airport that are crucial to any future operations --
including supplying the Peshmerga, e.g. keeping open your
military options; to shore up Kurdish morale; to send a
message to IS and its allies that any future campaigns in
that direction that they contemplate would not be a
cakewalk. The President said none of this due to his
anxieties about making about making implicit commitments
that he is not sure that he could meet.”

What they are
doing, says Brenner, is dipping into an old playbook
"trying to lay the groundwork for revival of the Sawah
Awakening movement among Sunni tribes that had suppressed
al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia in 2006-2008." That effort was based
on a vicious counter-insurgency campaign with plenty of
pay-offs to our robed "allies.”

Clearly, in the
aftermath of the ISIS victories, this maneuver decisively
failed.

No matter, for Obama, it was soon back to the golf
course on Martha's Vineyard, the Kennedy and then Clinton
vacation playground he has made his own. Maybe he feels like
he can relax because the British and French are shipping in
weapons to the US trained Peshmerga, whether they need them
or not. After all, they, too, have to promote their
"humanitarian" cred.

What's missing from the media
narratives that focus on these forever changing daily
incidents, is the deeper reality, that US
intervention has not saved Iraq but destroyed it, with more
than a million dead, unrepresentative and unaccountable
governments and enough war crimes to keep international
courts busy for decades.

To understand the depths of the
destruction and Iraqi despair, you need the perspective of
long time Iraq watchers like The Independent's Patrick
Cockburn whose new book is titled, "The end of a country,
and the start of a new dark age.”

He writes, "Iraq has
disintegrated. Little is exchanged between its three great
communities – Shia, Sunni and Kurd – except gunfire. The
outside world hopes that a more inclusive government will
change this but it is probably too late.

The main victor
in the new war in Iraq is the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (Isis) which wants to kill Shia rather than negotiate
with them. Iraq is facing a civil war that could be as
bloody as anything that we have seen in Syria and could go
on for years.”

Who is ultimately responsible for this?
We can blame Saddam Hussein, but he's long gone, or Osama
bin Laden who is swimming with the fishes.

More likely, as
is most often the case, blame the victims for the crimes,
but accepting responsibility is not something that
Washington is ever willing or able to do. It seems like we
would rather keep arming the "rebels" in Syria, the Israeli
army or the Ferguson Mo. Police.

Perhaps that's why all we
hear on TV news shows us a chorus for more killing, to save
"civilization" from "those People, "the heathens, of course.
Never mind that Iraq was the original home of
civilization.

It is summer time and the living is easy.
Besides, we have dead celebrities to mourn in these dog days
of August.

News Dissector Danny Schechter made the film
WMD about deceptive media in Iraq and wrote "When News Lies"
about U.S. media war coverage. (Select Books, 2006.) He
blogs at Newsdissector.net and edits the media issues site,
Mediachannel.org. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

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